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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

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Several months ago, I was talking Marie Vic about her project, "Popcorn." The installation she was working on was really simple (it involved handing out bags of freshly-made popcorn to passersby in the Chelsea gallery district), but her preparation was really intense, and so even though all she wanted me to do was write a brief artist's statement for the show, we talked for hours about relational aesthetics, institutional critique in Chelsea, and loads of other topics that I hadn't had to think about (as part of my job, at least) since I was in college.

It was fun as hell. Hoping to give Marie some further background, I suggested a blog post I'd written for Hard to Reach about a show at Murray Guy that was relevant to her new project. Reading stuff for this blog has been like hearing my own voice played back to me, but eventually I did give the post a look, and I ultimately decided that most of what I wrote here between November 2010 and January 2012 was nothing to be ashamed of.

Now that I'm freelancing full-time, it's come up that I should try to revive this thing. I've decided to start by re-posting some recent articles in The Forward and The New York Times, as well as a mix I made for a friend's wedding in the fall. Here they are.

Landmark Synagogue Seeks Right to Demolish Itself

Is 1850 Lower East Side Shul Crumbling Beyond Repair?

Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagadol, considered to be the oldest Russian Jewish congregation in the United States, is looking to reverse the landmark status of the venerable structure in which it once prayed in order to demolish it and make way for a multi-use development. Architectural preservationists have expressed dismay at the idea of losing a building that has been among the Lower East Side’s most prominent houses of worship since the mid-19th century.

Later, Sully, who was serving as a bartender, projected a 1980 Sonny Chiba film, “Shogun’s Ninja,” on a screen opposite the bar. Sully had been toting an archaic Walkman cassette player for music, and played mix tapes he had prepared especially for the evening. The alternative, he said, would have been flipping records over a turntable. But there was simply no room.